I’m approaching my 10 year diaversary (not until April 2014), but it’s close enough for me to consider it approaching. I wanted to take some time for myself to reflect back on where I was in my life 10 years ago. And, if you did the math properly, you will notice that I didn’t have diabetes 10 years ago.
10 years ago, I was in college playing football at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, PA. The season was winding down with only a few games left and I was really looking forward to the season being over and getting a break from football. I seemed to be getting worn down and just didn’t have the same amount of energy that I previously had and I just wanted to get home for Thanksgiving break.
I don’t recall having any of the symptoms of diabetes at this time, I just remember that I was feeling burnt out from the effects of a long football season. I didn’t start feeling any symptoms until about January – February. Once I came back from Winter break in January, I still felt sluggish going to the gym everyday and getting into our off-season workouts. I started to believe that my years of football were done, that I just didn’t want to put in the hard hours of the off-season anymore.
It wasn’t until spring break in early March that I decided that I just had enough. I couldn’t lift as much in the weight room, I couldn’t run as long during workouts and my arm would be tired after a 30 minute throwing session, so I wanted to have spring break to discuss with my parents about quitting football. I had never once thought about quitting football. Even when I had a full ride to Maryland and Rutgers thrown away because of an ACL injury in high school, I swallowed my pride and went to a D3 school. But, this time I could not take anymore of the off-season workouts.
While I was at home during that spring break, I remember going to breakfast with my mom and eating french toast with regular syrup and feeling like I was swallowing thorns because of how dry my mouth was after eating and going to the bathroom every 15-20 minutes while I was home and going out with my friends.
It wasn’t until a month after that I was on my way to the emergency with the 858 blood sugar diagnosis.
And then the life with diabetes began.